Gota de luz
Some words seem to be born of an inner and shared light…
For me they may arrive after the stillness of meditation; but just as often the softest and most human words are accompanied or are led by a melody. All creation is frequency, is a movement of waves, from the highest vibrations of quasars or atomic particles to the lowest throbbing of stars in their orbits.
Or, in our daily rounds, from the bluest light to the reddest, those frequencies of creation which our eyes perceive; from the whistle of a kettle or the hum of a bee to the drone of a bowed bass or the rumble of thunder, in frequencies which our ears perceive; to the cycles of ocean waves, whose interstices we hear as they crash to the sands, while their slow pulse, like the breath of the planet, moves through our bodies noticed, unnoticed; to the celestial hum of the earth spinning on its poles; to the year-long wave of a planet around its sun; to the millennial arc of a sun around our galaxy’s core, a music so slow that only the Spirit can listen, leaving ourselves to intuit from our cruder senses.
Against the backdrop of these slowest sounds of creation, human departures are regular, and received as sudden silence. I remember hearing of a family member’s death while living abroad, and in my body I felt it as though I had swallowed a stone, and the stone inched slowly and painfully earthward, from my throat to my belly. Life is so short. It seemed I had accomplished nothing with my years, and that I could accomplish nothing, nothing that really mattered. A vida tão breve. A vida tão breve…
And as that phrase repeated itself within me, I found there was music behind it, and with music – with that vibration which runs through all things – the sounds led to another line, and the next line to more song, and this bosso nova melody and words came to me about our place in Light. I wrote it in Portuguese, because the Brazilian tongue was written on the chords of a guitar, and with hands following the rhythmic swaying of hips; and because my heart when it speaks Brazilian Portuguese rides those particular waves, that liquid frequency. I wish I had a place in the South to sing it, that those my other neighbors, whose earth and troubles and joys I shared for seven years and whose children (my children) were born on their soil, could hear it.
If I write it here, maybe some star wandering the Internet finds a few words, and rests a moment.
Drop of Light
Life is so brief a falling star that flies from nothing to land on the earth light taking shape of a body and soul learns embrace and release learns life is a dance…
Gota de Luz
A vida tão breve estrela cadente que voa de nada e pousa na terra a luz vira forma de corpo e alma que abraça e goza a vida é uma dança
Será que esquece o corpo sua fonte? Será que o fogo não mais se ilumina? O que voa o leva do dia ao dia e nunca se cansa a vida é uma dança
Têm gente que dizem não sabes da dança têm gente que chamam luz escuridão não se aquecem na fogueira-vida seu mundo esfria como o dorso da mão
A vida é breve estrela cadente mas voa que voa de um mundo pró outro prá pousar na terra na forma de um corpo a chama encarnada a vida é uma dança
Têm gente que dizem não sabem da dança têm gente que chamam luz escuridão…
Mas a vida é breve prá fechar os olhos o céu tão brilhante almas inumeráveis cada qual na espera de achar um parceiro gozar e abraçar-se a vida é uma dança
…
Do you suppose that the body could forget its source? Could it be that the fire can’t ignite it any more? What has wings will fly it from one day to the next will never grow tired of life as a dance
There are those who will say you know nothing of Dancing those people will tell you that Darkness is Light; they find no comfort in this bonfire-life their world grows as cold as the back of a hand
Life is so brief a tumbling star… but what has wings will fly from one world to another will rest on the earth in a body’s form the flame in the flesh this life is a dance
There are those who will tell you they know nothing of Dancing there are those who will tell you that Darkness is Light…
… but life is too short to close your eyes its heaven so bright with uncountable souls each of them waiting to find a companion to release and embrace this life is a dance.
Since each language has its own vibration, and each word spoken sets other different ones to ringing, translation can only suggest the outline of a song. Or, if the music is left behind, words miss their heart-companion, and you get only half the story, maybe less. Maybe you get only one story, when music offers hundreds. Nonetheless: we reach out with all of the means available to us, each language a harmonic of the one music in which all things are expressed.